


Liminal

by gauntTwister



Series: Solstice Trilogy [2]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, death stuff, emotional stuff, human!Danny, lonesomeness and company, maybe pining but not in the romantic way, more like in the shaping-up-to-be-found-family way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:28:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28436907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gauntTwister/pseuds/gauntTwister
Summary: The phantom leaves the graveyard behind and strikes off on his own for Amity Park; Danny, meanwhile, finds his perspective shifting from having met the graveyard ghost.
Series: Solstice Trilogy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2082936
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	Liminal

The sun rose shortly before eight o'clock in the morning. It blew kisses of orange and yellow into the sky, making the empty promise of warmth; the snow piled high on tree branches and fenceposts glowed along as if on fire. The air, exhausted from the overnight gales, was crisp and silent.

The phantom followed the road's edge without a sound. He glanced over the field and regarded the rising sun as an animal, as if it might lunge or bite at him, and he knew he wouldn't shake its glare so long as he was out in the open. The living struggled in darkness, where everything became grey and shapes blurred together and detail vanished into whispers; the phantom's instinct was to shy away from daylight, where the sun bleached colours away and stripped everything to a dizzying yellow-white. It wouldn't _hurt_ him, but he had to find shelter soon. He turned his attention back to the road, squinting against the snow, and kept on. How far was Amity Park supposed to be, he wondered.

_Wasn't this supposed to be easy?_

Being dead really was easy, or at least he liked to say so. Getting there was a bit of a pain, but once that was over and done with and all the dust settled, it was a piece of cake. Drifting unseen in and out of wherever he liked, whenever he liked, was a plus - and he wouldn't trade flight in for any other ability in the world. He was the afterlife of the party, he'd been told on more than one occasion - always up for a haunt, and he was certainly very good at it. And why not? He had all the time in the world.

Of course, he'd have to find a makeshift grave if he meant to get any sleep. He thought of the old one, just a little hole to crawl into, and they'd even thrown in a very professional-looking rock with his name on it. _Bring-your-own-body, though,_ he'd said once with a shake of the head.

_Can't have it all, can you?_

He didn't think too much of the body. It wasn't a particularly deep-seated hate, but he was always the first one to shrug and poke fun at the thing if it would get a laugh. _That old junker? Can't even get it started anymore. What's it good for? At least they left it in the dark. Bet that stupid thing's real ugly by now._

The road curved up to the left, and he kept along the curb, a foot short of where the plows had dumped great heaps of discarded snow. The knot in his chest twisted unhappily in the sun, and he ignored it as best as he was able; it was just because of the daylight, he told himself, acutely aware of how long he'd been out in it already. He'd find a place to haunt soon, he thought, just until dusk. In his living days, he'd thrown around _haunt_ as a joke, mostly, but this time around it was the real deal.

 _Consider yourself haunted._ He'd said that as a joke too, just an off-the-top-of-his-head one, and he was beginning to wonder if that was what had started this at all. He'd spoken to a living human being for the first time in eleven years - had even made him laugh - and now he was out in the _daylight_ of all things trying to find him again.

The trees were crowding in over one side of the road, branches weighed down by the night's snow and burning an icy yellow in the sun, and the shade allowed the unease to lift a little. The phantom was thinking of Danny then, who had stumbled into the Whispering Oaks after dark, who'd been alone and cold and who just needed to get home. _You're a lot like him,_ went something far back in the phantom's mind, and he sighed.

_Is that why you want to see him so bad?_

The low rumble of a single car came up behind him, and he turned over his shoulder to watch it pass. The road had been deserted almost all night, once the snow quit and the plows came through, but when the sun rose the living rose too, and in another hour or so there might even be real traffic. The car went on its way, kicking up chips of crushed snow from the rear tires, and slowed around the curve in the road. The phantom followed, knowing he wasn't going to keep up with it but knowing too that it was headed someplace that must have had at least one dark corner where he could cram himself for a few hours. The road straightened out again, and he spotted a handful of shoddy buildings coming out of the crackling off-white haze. They came into focus as he got closer: all brick, and snowed up almost to the windowsills, and he swept into the first one without hesitation.

The inside was dark - dark enough, anyhow - and he willed the fretting in his chest to relax. He settled into the draftiest corner he could find, made colder by the ever-present chill of his ice core, and pooled into the darkness to rest. Maybe he'd sleep, maybe he wouldn't, but the place would be his until dusk; a dusty small-town lumber shop didn't strike him as apt to be open, and he wouldn't be disturbed. He had the cold, he had his own thoughts, he had a little shadowy hole to crawl into, and he had all the time in the world.

It felt almost as if he hadn't left that old boneyard at all.

* * *

Danny was exhausted. The holidays always took a toll on him, and he couldn't remember a year when he wasn't glad for them to be over; he was glad, too, that his feuding parents had finally quieted down, and Jazz had even taken a portion of the decorations down on the twenty-sixth. _I don't think Dad's going to take the tree down until the new year,_ she'd said, _but I know you've been stressed. Hang in there, little bro._ Danny, for once, appreciated her effort.

The upcoming week off from class meant, in all likelihood, that he'd be spending more time in the lab. His parents were both under the impression that he (and Jazz, to a lesser degree) aspired to be like them; in plain fact, it was simply that he failed to aspire hard enough to be _unlike_ them for them to notice, and his casual indifference was somehow mistaken for enthusiasm.

What he really wanted to be was an astronaut. _Ghosthunter_ had always seemed a bit ridiculous, if he was honest.

Most of the time, he didn't mind much. He'd help out on a project or two if it meant avoiding his schoolwork (and during the year, he was an expert at that), and he followed along easily enough with the tasks given to him. Sometimes, and if he caught his mother in the right mood, she'd show him the fun stuff; maybe he'd get to go at it with the acetylene torch like the time he'd helped her finish the casing on the radiation inverter, or she'd set him loose with a set of specs and the laser cutter and watch him go ham.

Tonight, though, was draining him. His hands were at work, and had been for the past two hours; despite it, his mind was cloudy and he couldn't find his focus. He thought at first of the holidays, and how easily he'd stressed himself out this year. He felt like December had been cheated out of his hands - more than he usually felt, anyway - and there was no getting it back.

There never was.

He was thinking, too, of the ghost. For his entire life, he'd been told they were real. He'd never actually seen one, and neither had his parents, and after a while they had started to seem like superstition more than anything. For the last year or two, he'd begun to assume they didn't exist at all. That somehow seemed cleaner, as if he could say he'd outgrown them like he'd outgrown superheroes and monster trucks and all that. It was kid stuff.

Then he'd seen one - he'd _met_ one, and that right there was a notable difference. He'd met one, and he hadn't been out to terrorize him or even looked all that scary, and Danny had trusted him; it was sometime that night, maybe when the lonely little phantom had smiled at him or maybe when they both sat out by the gas station or maybe when Danny had asked if he was real and he just seemed so _hurt_ \- that was when he realized he didn't know a thing about ghosts at all.

"Danny?"

He wasn't listening to what his mother was saying. Her voice seemed more distant than usual, and it wasn't until she put a hand on his shoulder that he even knew she was talking to him.

"Danny?"

He jumped. "What?"

She stood there behind him. Her eyes were unreadable behind the goggles of her jumpsuit but her lips were pursed somwhat and he had the idea that she was frowning. "I asked if you wanted to help me get another power core put together tonight?"

Danny's eyes drifted to the hulking mangle of parts against the far wall of the lab. It was mostly chunks - a knot of wiring here, a dormant control panel there - but the frame had already been mounted and it looked, in his opinion, like it had eaten something funny and thrown up the pieces. "How many is that now, four?"

His mother nodded. "We'll need that many if we're going to kickstart the thing when it's done. Haven't I shown you the plans?"

"You did." Danny had seen them a hundred times, and each time they made just as little sense. The thing was destined to punch a hole into spacetime, or something like that, but the tech went very easily over his head and it had always sounded like something from a movie rather than a plausible feat. Well, that and he'd never been excited enough about the thing to learn any of its deep-down mechanisms or inner-workings. He supposed it would be the kind of thing to give him a bad feeling, if only it didn't look so _stupid_ half-assembled like that.

"Mom?"

She paused. "Yes?"

Danny set the soldering iron down and turned to face her. "Mom, look. I guess I'm not really feeling it tonight." Like there was ever a time when he was really _into_ any of this. "We could do that tomorrow, maybe? I don't know."

"Of course, dear," she said, and smiled. Behind the goggles, he felt like it was fake, but allowed her to lean over and deliver a kiss to his forehead anyway. "Love you, Danny."

"Love-you-too," he mumbled, knowing she'd notice if he didn't, and went upstairs. His mind was in a fuzz, tired but refusing sleep; he retreated into his room, shut the door behind him, and fell face-first onto the bed in the hope of jarring something loose. He was sure he wouldn't be able to get any sleep otherwise.

He thought, at first, that it was because he hadn't seen Sam and Tuck since before the break. That was - what, six days? - which was longer than he usually went without meeting up at the Nasty Burger or at least seeing them at lunch. He propped himself up on his elbows, fishing around the top drawer in his bedside table for his phone. Maybe he'd get lucky and they'd both be available. He'd still text Tuck first.

He set the phone down, knowing he'd hear it when he got the text back, and sighed. If he hadn't already put together one of his two brand-new ships, and left the glue to dry on the second one, he would have cracked those open. He glanced over at it, all crooked and clamped-together on his desk, and part of him wanted to check to see if he could paint it yet. He wasn't about to touch it, not really, not after the one time he'd gotten impatient and all the pieces had seemed fine but halfway through painting it he'd noticed they'd started to slip and by then it was too late and the whole model had looked like it had begun to melt. He'd ended up chucking that one into a greebles pile.

He rolled over and splayed his hands out, staring up at the ceiling. The spinning restlessness wasn't about to quit, and the dampening fog in his mind wasn't about to quit either; he thought of the lab again, and how that at least seemed to keep some aspect of him busy, but it had become tedious in the way that homework was tedious, and unfulfilling in the same way despite the praise and appreciation of his mother when some project was completed.

It was feeling _fake_ all of a sudden. That was it. It didn't matter, just like homework didn't, because it wasn't _relevant_ and it wasn't _helpful_ and sure cutting things out with lasers was fun but wasn't it just playing around? He didn't know a thing about ghosts, not in the real world anyhow. What good was welding chunks of metal together and wiring up a supposed ghost-detector if that wasn't how ghosts worked? Wasn't it easier to just go and talk to them?

Or was that just what he wanted to do?

He thought of the phantom again, and how careful he'd been, even when they'd both been floating over the cemetery and looking down at the hazy yellow of the streetlights in the snow. _You're not okay. You need to keep warm._ How long had someone like that been dead, Danny wondered - how many years had the phantom spent in the dark, and how many years had be been alone?

_Don't forget about me._

It was the last thing the phantom had said before vanishing into thin air, and just thinking it made something in Danny's gut twist. _You could have come back with me,_ he wanted to say too late, and it wasn't as if he could snap his fingers and allow it, as if he'd be able to call off _his own parents_ when they found out.

What was Danny going to tell them? He'd refused to say a word that night when they'd taken him home, even though his mother hadn't been angry and she'd said she loved him more than anything in the world and he knew she meant it. What could he say? _I saw a real ghost, and he helped me._ She wouldn't believe it.

So wasn't it easier not to say anything at all?

* * *

The night sky really came to life on the empty road. The phantom stood, one foot on each of the double yellow lines, and stared upward. There was no moon to scare the stars away; he saw ones that he hadn't even known were there, and others that he only recognized vaguely. He'd never studied up on the names, but there must have been more of them here than he'd ever seen at the Whispering Oaks. Despite that he'd been buried there for seventeen years, and that he'd spent almost every dark hour of those seventeen years outside, the light from beyond the trees had washed out the sky and he'd never gotten a really good look at them. He'd never thought much of it. Who cared about stars, anyway, when there was the much more important issue of _being dead_ to contend with?

It had only taken him three days to get over his own death. It was the fastest turn-around any of the ghosts had ever seen, he remembered being told once, and he was always very proud of himself for that. _Life or death, you still keep your cool. And now look, you've got an ice core to help you out. That means it's paying off, doesn't it?_

He'd had a home funeral. The days leading up to it, from the little he recalled, had been a muddle of confusion and disbelief; it wasn't until he saw his own body lying all tidied-up and embalmed that the thought even occurred in his mind. _I'm dead?_ It was ridiculous, at least at the time, and he'd sat on the back of the sofa and watched everyone leave flowers and sit and talk in whispers until the hearse had pulled up.

The burial, only officially attended by his close family, had also been attended by the residents of the Whispering Oaks Cemetery. Four of them had watched the hearse trundle in, and one had hollered _we got another one, boys!_ to a round of cheers. A dozen spirits had come out to greet him after that, mostly little old ladies that had probably spent the last of their living days knitting sweaters and doilies, and round-bodied old gentlemen with suits and moustaches and warm smiles, and a toddler who, he was informed later, had died at four-years-old. One of the old men had come right up and shaken his hand. _Come on in, youngster! Make yourself comfortable - we're in this one for the long haul!_

It was in that moment - he remembered this with the utmost clarity - that he had his bearings again. So he was dead. So he had a big old rock with his name carved into it. So they'd probably throw him flowers every year. So they were burying his body in the ground.

In life, he'd been cool. Shouldn't he still be?

He'd looked back up at the gentlemanly old spirit, and had done his best to erase the bewilderment that had followed him for three days prior. _That old thing? Who needs it,_ he'd said with a chuckle.

_Dead weight, amirite?_

A thin line of clouds drifted over Orion's belt, and with them came a stiff and bitter breeze. The phantom sighed, shoving his hands into his pockets as if his fingers could still go numb from the cold. It was a leftover habit - one of many - and his high-tops continued along the pavement without a sound. He'd always kept his cool in life. Now he had an ice core to help him out, and that should have made it easier. Why did it still feel sometimes like he was faking it? What else was he supposed to do, sit around and mope about something that happened almost two decades ago that he couldn't fix? Didn't he have better things to do than that?

Wasn't that why he was out here, in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night, with nothing but the word of one human that he wouldn't be forgotten? That wasn't a lot to ride on.

Would this even be worth it?

The distant yellow of headlights made the phantom turn. He began to cast a shadow then, a single muddled one that slowly shaped up and shifted into two as the car's headlights barreled closer. He stared it down. What was it going to do, hit him? He stood dead-center in the road, and his image vanished almost completely - _almost,_ except for the blazing green eyes and the striking shadow. He'd done that one by the graveyard a hundred times, and it always helped him feel better after a rough patch. Once he'd made an old Buick swerve almost completely off the pavement, and he'd considered it bonus points at the time.

It was only the glowing eyes that watched the car pass by, skid a little, and catch its tread again. Oh, he'd scared the daylights out of that one, he thought with a little satisfied smile. _No wonder you've been in the dumps lately. When's the last time you pulled a stunt like that, anyway?_ He was in it for kicks, always had been. What else would he have been in it for? He had all the time in the world, and that was a lot of haunting - if he didn't make the best of it, what kind of eternity would that be? He was the afterlife of the party. Best act like it. Maybe, he thought, that was all it would take to get his stride back. He may have been in a rut but it was nothing a handful of tricks couldn't fix.

 _Showoff,_ Danny had called him. That was a compliment in his book, and thinking of Danny brightened him. He wouldn't really have forgotten about the phantom so quickly, would he? It had taken a solid seven years for those old parents of his to quit leaving petunias on his birthday; it must take more than a week or two for him to get out of Danny's head. At least, it would take longer than that for the phantom to quit thinking about him.

He paused on the double yellow lines, stared up at the sky and at all those stars, and nodded resignedly to himself. _That's how much of a rut you're in, huh? So lonely you're going to sit and think about one dumb human, and so desperate you're going to leave your own grave to find him?_

That was where the twinge in his chest kept coming from. How far had he come from his own grave, anyhow? It wasn't much - and that carcass was probably even less by now - but it was the _something_ that he knew, and to leave it behind for the first time in his whole afterlife had started to feel like a betrayal. Of what, he couldn't quite say yet, but a betrayal nonetheless, and a sharp and complete one at that.

But it wasn't as if he liked the body, or whatever was left of it. Who would?

He shook the nagging thoughts out of his head and continued on. Danny this, boneyard that, and all under a clinging film of old things he was tired of feeling - he really did need to haunt, he grumbled to himself.

Then things would be better.

* * *

"Mom?"

The voice had come from the kitchen doorway, and her attention was cut from the half-assembled thermos in her hands. She looked up to see her son, and brightened. "Come on in, dear. Have a seat."

Danny slid into the chair opposite her, avoiding her eyes as if he'd meant to give her the news of a failing report card. His mouth opened and closed a few times. "Can we talk?"

"Of course, sweetie - something bothering you?"

"Well," Danny started, but couldn't get anything out besides that. All of a sudden, _I don't want to do ghost stuff anymore_ felt stupid. Could he really just quit, even if he'd never been terribly invested in the first place? Somehow that didn't feel like it was allowed, but he couldn't put his finger on why.

His mother was still waiting for him. "You know you can talk to me about anything, dear," she said helpfully, as if that was all the encouragement he needed. Still, her eyes on him like that were impossible, as if she was waiting for him to say just the wrong thing, and he had the ridiculous idea in his head that she'd come down on him like a ton of bricks.

He tried again: "Well - there's some stuff I've been thinking about. This might sound kind of dumb, I don't know, but." He bit his tongue; what would have come out had he not bitten it would have been accusatory. _You don't know as much about ghosts as you think you do_ was more blunt than he meant to be. Then again, he felt like he'd already somehow screwed it up.

_Spit it out._

"Mom," he said finally, "I dunno if I wanna keep doing this ghost stuff."

His mother set the thermos down and considered. She hadn't said a word yet, and he was certain it was because she was thinking of how to tell him off. Why wouldn't she, when she and his father both expected him to pick up their trade - and had expected it for years?

"Danny, what's made you change your mind all of a sudden?" She sounded concerned, but he was still walking on eggshells. "I thought you had fun in the lab with us."

He slid both his hands under the table and clamped them together. "Yeah, I mean I did, but . . . maybe it's getting kind of old, you know?" That had come out wrong.

"Have we been overbearing?" she asked carefully, as if she hoped it wouldn't discourage him from being honest, "I know you don't take well to that - but, if something's the matter you have to talk to us about it."

Danny's gaze fell.

"That's it, isn't it," said his mother, but only when he wouldn't. After waiting for him to elaborate, and after he failed to do so, she sighed. "Danny, whatever this is about, you have to tell me. You can do that, can't you? I promise you're not in trouble."

He knew he couldn't tell her the truth. He couldn't afford to - for the phantom's sake - so without anything useful in his mind he derailed instead. "I guess it's just I've been thinking. All the stuff you and Dad do is about ghosts. But, have you ever actually seen one?"

"Have you and Jazz been talking?" his mother asked, although there was no malice in the accusation. "She said the same thing a couple of years ago, you know."

Danny frowned. Somehow, that wasn't what he'd been expecting. "What?"

"That's right. She came down into the lab one day and announced she didn't believe in ghosts anymore. She was very vocal about it at the time, but I thought she'd gotten most of it out of her system by now. I guess I should have seen this coming from you sooner or later." She smiled. "That's okay. You can take a break from the spectral science if you need to. I know you've got to be your own person and make your own statement."

That didn't make Danny feel any better. "Great."

"I'll tell your father, too," she added, "He gets very excitable sometimes, you know how he is, but I know he's trying his best, and he loves you. We both do. You know that, don't you?"

There was no saving the conversation. "Yeah," he said and got up to his feet. "I'm gonna go and paint the X-Wing. I'll show you when it's done, if you want."

"That'd be lovely, sweetie!" said his mother brightly, and returned to the half-finished thermos in her hands.

Danny made it as far as the top of the stairs before letting all his breath out in a restrained huff. What kind of disaster was that? He retreated to his room, where he'd spent almost the entirety of the past two days, and slid both of his hands over his face and groaned. _Take a break? What does she think this is?_

What was he going to tell her when she expected him to go back at it? He knew she'd do that, sooner or later, just like she always seemed to hear _career goals_ instead of _fun hobby sometimes_ when he talked about it - and it _had_ been fun, sometimes, at least until this year when the holidays had come down on him more than usual and he couldn't seem to get back into any rhythm at all, not to mention the incident when he'd run away but that was just because he was _stressed_ and they didn't seem to notice that either.

And just like that, he fell into clarity. The fuzz cleared from his mind and the hand of anxious fire vanished from his chest. What took its place was a knot of ice. It was the coldness of realization, of the question that hadn't occurred to him to ask until just then, and that question was this: _what if it's because of him? Is that why you don't want to do this now?_ The night he'd run away, and he'd sat and had a real conversation with the graveyard ghost - that was the most honest he'd been in months. Nevermind the circumstances. He'd had a chance to talk and so he'd talked, and it was the night that turned _everything he knew about ghosts_ into _everything his parents assumed about ghosts,_ just redecorated and with a little red bow on top.

 _Everything his parents assumed_ had been wrong since that night, but now that he thought about it, wasn't it shaping up to be dangerous too?

Was that why he couldn't focus in the lab anymore? Since he'd met the phantom, the expertise of his parents somehow hadn't held as much weight, and he'd felt like he was playing around rather than accomplishing anything important. As true as that was, it was resting carefully-balanced on the very tip of something specific and crucial, and something that skewed every single thing down in that lab into more dangerous waters.

Since that night, _ghost_ in his mind had come to mean _person._ He'd met a phantom who was lonely and sad and who wanted to help him and those were all human feelings, and that was why he was all muddled when he went down in the lab. _Ghost science_ , by that logic, was starting to mean _person science_ \- and considering the things that were built down there, didn't that make _scientist_ a little closer to _serial killer?_

Danny thought about that for a minute, but that didn't feel right at all. He tried to imagine Mom and Dad teaming up to wield the axe, and teaching him to wield it too, but that was too much of a stretch. Did they really want to hurt anybody? Of course they didn't. Why would they, even if they were all serious about it most of the time? All that meant, Danny told himself, was that for them it was _career_ instead of _fun hobby sometimes._

Maybe he'd been too abrupt about this all. Maybe he did need a break. His mother, as usual, was right. He knew she'd ease off him, and in a few days he'd have his head clear and he'd be able to focus again and re-engage, and what was the harm in it, anyway, especially if he was having fun with soldering and might even learn to do some of the more complicated wiring later on in the winter.

He just needed a break. That was all.

* * *

At one o'clock in the morning, the Dusk-til-Dawn was nearly deserted. It had started snowing again, although it was nothing compared to the storm the other night - just enough of a dusting to warrant the traffic to slow to a crawl, which was plain rude at this point - and the night-crew-of-two would likely have little-to-nothing to be doing for the next several hours. They were both unmotivated, underpaid, and bored; one of them sat on the counter by the registers, scrolling through his phone and not particularly caring that the corporate-mandated cameras could see it.

The other was doing the same thing, only in the back office.

The one up front - his name tag read _Charlie_ \- paused for a moment and frowned. Hadn't he heard that song when he was clocking in? Would it really kill the station to have more than six songs on loop for eternity, plus commercials?

_"S'cuse me?"_

The boy at the counter made him jump. He shoved his phone into his back pocket, knowing he'd get back to it in a minute anyway, and hopped down from the countertop. "Sorry," he said quickly, clearing his throat to make room for his customer-service voice, "Didn't hear you come in. Anything I can get you?"

Now that he had a better look at the kid, Charlie supposed he couldn't have been more than fifteen. He was close-to-average: black jacket, high-tops, beat-up jeans - but something about him threw Charlie off. For the moment, he couldn't tell what. Perhaps it was that he held a little too still somehow, or that he hadn't blinked.

Charlie dismissed the feeling.

The stranger shook his head. _"Question. D'you know how far Amity Park is from here?"_

Charlie the cashier put on the same smile that he did for the other customers that came through. "Yeah, it's up the highway, half an hour, I think? Maybe more? Dunno exactly. I don't get up that way much."

 _"Could you check? It's important."_ He was still staring, and the green of his eyes all of a sudden felt artificial.

 _Radioactive_ was probably the word that Charlie was looking for, but his mind fumbled it and it was gone. "Uh. Yeah. Sure, man," he pulled out his phone again, swiped across to his maps app, and glanced back up at the kid on the other side of the counter. What he'd meant to ask was _you said Amity Park?_ but he dropped that too; one of the soda coolers was hanging open, which it hadn't been doing a minute ago, and despite that the hinge mechanisms were springloaded to rest shut. Something cold and prickly settled in the back of his mind, but he refocused and turned back down to the map on his phone. "Forty minutes, give-or-take. Turnoff's past Maple Falls, looks like. Should take you most of the way there."

 _"Most?"_ asked the stranger, leaning forward to peer over the screen of Charlie's phone. Along with the motion came a chill draft, and whether it had come from him or from the still-open cooler Charlie couldn't tell.

"Ah, yeah - there'll be signs for it when you get close. Decent-size town, I think - "

 _"Okay, cool. Thanks,"_ said the stranger, and Charlie swore he heard it come over the radio speakers too. He glanced up at the one over the registers, and when he looked back again the rest of the cooler doors were hanging open as well.

"Who're you talking to?" The manager poked their head out from the door of the back office, and despite himself Charlie jolted.

"What?" he faced them, hoping to curb his rising unease.

The manager frowned. "Heard you talking - ?"

"Customer," said Charlie, and he looked back to find that the space before the registers was vacant. He frowned. "Was just here."

The manager shook their head. "Sure, Charlie. Whatever."

Charlie was about to press it. He glanced back at the lot outside, but it too was empty. Shouldn't he at least have seen the footprints leading up to and away from the doors - and shouldn't the doors themselves have made windshield-wiper shapes in the snow where they'd been opened? He kept his eyes on the sidewalk and the cold prickly thing in the back of his head went down his spine. "You didn't see anyone on the cameras, did you?"

"Nah," said the manager, who wasn't entirely convinced that anything had happened at all, "S'why I asked. Sounded like you were talking to yourself. Not gonna judge, though. Been there, done that."

"Hm."

"What?"

Charlie opened his mouth again but decided against it. He watched the cooler doors ease themselves shut one at a time behind the manager's back, and he _knew_ he saw a frosted handprint on that last one, but something told him to keep his mouth shut. Whatever had just asked the way to a place called Amity Park was best left undisturbed. He noticed, too, that one of the fluorescents - the one over where the stranger had been standing - had gone dark. At least the chill had finally passed.

Eyes that bright, practically glowing, no footprints. . . it was increasingly apparent that it was a _what_ and not a _who. You don't wanna know,_ Charlie decided. _At least you did him a favor, and you don't owe him. Could always be worse._

And Charlie dismissed it.

* * *

The phantom finally had his head screwed on all the way. He'd seen a few signs for Maple Falls already, although none for Amity Park just yet, and he was pretty smug about the look he'd caught on that overnight clerk's face. The handprint trick was a classic, and never failed to get a rise out of people. He used to pull that sort of nonsense all the time, and he'd always thought it was the pinnacle of comedy.

At least now he knew he was on the right track, too. He wondered how long it'd take to find Danny once he did make it to Amity Park. He didn't even have a last name to go on; pinpointing someone like that would be no easy feat in a small town, to say nothing of whatever sort of place Amity would be, and he wasn't looking forward to starting from scratch. Then again, he did have all the time in the world.

But all of that was still riding on the assumption that Danny wouldn't forget about him.

_You think he hasn't done that already?_

That hit him like a sledgehammer to the chest, and both hands flew up to his mouth in an effort to catch the sound that would otherwise have escaped him. _Don't even think that! He promised he wouldn't forget about you. He wouldn't. . ._

_. . . would he?_

Seventeen years had worn down the promises of everyone he'd ever met, and had seen his grave fade into the background of living memory. His company of spirits had dwindled, and he'd spent the last six years alone; what was left for him, really, if no one remembered him? Would he disappear completely? If the living went on without him, had he even existed for those last six years?

_Are you even real?_

Did he still exist, even now, hanging in the dark over a two-way purgatory with nothing but a first name to lead him? And to what, grumbled the deep and ghastly voice in him. To one living soul out of a thousand in a place he'd never been, thinking maybe that living soul would look his way again? Wasn't that a little much, to come out all this way to be disappointed? What if he went home, where things were comfortable, where he had his own grave and didn't have to scrounge for shadows during the day and get lost looking for a place that was a name and nothing else in his mind.

He floated up to the metal sign over the road - _MAPLE FALLS, 8; AMITY PARK, 19_ \- and came to rest on the frost-encrusted frame around the letters. _Why did you leave them behind? Can't you still go home?_ That was the ache in his chest, the one that pulled harder and more sharply as he went, the one that said _home_ when his mind said _grave_ and that made him want to go back where things weren't good but they were things he knew and where he'd spent the entire seventeen years of his afterlife and sure alright it may not have been much but at least he had his own burial plot and a stone that used to have his name on it and maybe even a couple of _bones_ still -

_You actually miss that old carcass of yours? Don't you hate that stupid thing?_

Of course he hated it, hated it ever since he'd lost hold of it. It was the worst keepsake he could imagine, all grinning teeth and without any hair left and he denounced it as often as he could _bet the eyeballs went first who needs it dead weight amirite_ thinking he could leave it behind, but there was no leaving it behind. Even out here, nineteen miles from Amity Park, there was something in him that wanted to go back. It felt like whatever was left of that old corpse had taken ahold of him and wouldn't let go. It was fingers of ice and frost in the deepest part of him he knew.

And he was _so tired_ of the cold.

He'd been dead and in the ground for the better half of two decades, and he'd been cold every second of it. It wasn't in the way that he _felt_ the cold, but it had followed him around the boneyard even on the Fourth of July, crept up around the corners of his gravestone first thing in the fall, before anyone else's, followed behind him like a dog the morning after he'd died.

It hadn't occurred to him at the time, of course, only that he was out for too long in the the makeshift fort in the woods he and the punks had graffitied all over and thinking _where is everybody_ and feeling everything go numb a little at a time _but they said they'd be here they wouldn't forget about me_ and then the next thing he remembered through the stupor of frost was pulling himself to his feet and hoping to shuffle home and thinking for the first time that the sun was burning a little too bright.

_You still think they'd remember about you?_

_You still think Danny would?_

_Really?_

_What are you, obsessed?_

_Go home. Go home to the things you knew in life._

He felt as if he'd rend in two. There was nothing for him at that empty graveyard - _they moved on without you_ \- and he knew it. He wished he could go back to life - _I want to feel alive_ \- in the familiar cool of his grave - _in the warmth of company_ \- where he was stuck with it forever - _where I have all the time in the world._

He couldn't go back. He had to see Danny again. He had to be seen again.

He had to _exist._

The grappling claw of the grave broke. It was like an avalanche rolling in reverse; bitter crushing cold came off him in an instant, retreating into the deepest wells in his chest. _There's nothing left for you there. There's nothing left_ of _you there._

_There's no point in turning back when you've lost all you had._

_And maybe you are obsessed._

_But isn't he still warm because of you?_

The phantom pushed himself up. The frost around the sign where he'd settled had grown into a crystalline tangle of spikes, but didn't resist his movement. Perhaps, in time, he might be able to leave it behind.

And perhaps he might finally reach a place called Amity Park.

* * *

Jazz didn't say a word the whole way down. She kept sliding Danny glances, as if she was thinking about opening up her mouth to ask about it, but she decided against it every time.

Danny didn't say a word either. Buildings and fields and lakes and fenceposts crawled by outside the window, and he rested his chin in his palm and stared out at them. He could feel Jazz's judging looks, even without facing her, and the knot in his stomach turned over. He was certain she'd annoy him about it - given the circumstances, he was surprised she'd made it this far and kept her mouth shut.

 _Jazz, I need you to help me with something._ It was rare that he ever asked her for favors at all, and he'd expected her to make a remark about the last time that he'd done anything for her (which, if he was honest, was beyond his recollection). Instead, she'd just given him a little frown, not the disappointed kind but the thinking kind, and asked if he was alright. He'd said he would be, so long as she did this favor for him and so long as she never ever said a word about it to Mom or Dad, and despite _don't tell Mom_ being the biggest red flag in the world she'd agreed - but only on the stipulation that he told her what had been going on the past few days and promised to let her help him out with it. After a brief back-and-forth, he said he'd explain it on the way back.

At the very least, she was keeping her word about not being nosy until then.

In the daylight, his recollection of the route was almost lost, and it wasn't until he saw the turnoff and the stately wrought-iron fence that he realized they'd arrived. He pointed, and Jazz slowed. "There. Turn there." The fence parted on either side of the path to allow them in, and _Whispering Oaks Cemetery_ was mounted in iron and ice overhead.

Jazz frowned. "A cemetery? I thought you said you made it to town?"

"I did."

"What's this about, then?"

"I said I'd tell you after."

Jazz's lips thinned, but she held her tongue and just sighed instead. The path hadn't been plowed; she pulled up to the side of the road, allowing the space for Danny's door to open, and let the car idle.

Danny had the door open and had flung himself out almost before she'd come to a stop. His eyes darted from one protruding stone to the next - _which one was it?_ \- and for a second he just stood among them and turned about. _Name's long gone,_ the phantom had said. One of the tall ones was cracked, and he went down the row and swiped the snow from its surface. It looked to have been attacked with a chisel; its face was rough and marred, and an old half-worn layer of spray-paint still clung to one side. That must have been the one.

"Phantom?" Danny was careful not to stand directly over the thing - _don't step on anybody, will you?_ \- and when there was no answer he tried again. "It's me, it's Danny - don't worry about her, it's just my sister - please come out - I told you I wouldn't forget, didn't I? I wanted to talk to you. . ."

The phantom's grave was still. Danny's voice trailed off, and for a long time he just stood over it in deafening silence, breaths puffing steadily into the winter air. _Why won't he answer me? This has to be the one, I know it is._ He thought, with nothing else to think, that the phantom was ignoring him on purpose. _Why wouldn't he?_ said the sharp voice in his mind, _you were going to be a ghosthunter, weren't you? Doesn't that make you dangerous?_

 _I'm sorry,_ he wanted to say, but his mouth had run dry. _Sorry for scaring you off, I guess, sorry I can't stay, sorry that you're just as scared and lonely as I was and I can't help._ One of his hands closed around something small and sharp, left forgotten in the pocket of his hoody, and he pulled it out. It was a little open-backed pin, handed out by the Casper student council one day for something he hadn't cared about, and he supposed it was better than nothing. _Maybe if he comes out later he'll at least know I was here. I promised him I wouldn't forget._

He left it atop the stone and stood there in the last of the afternoon sun.

_Just wanted someone to talk to._

He went back through the snow, giving the grave one last look, and returned to the car where Jazz was waiting. To her credit, she made it until he'd shut the door and buckled himself in before she opened her mouth.

"Do you feel better now?"

Danny didn't answer. She hadn't been condescending about it, which was about all that he expected of her. Still, he hadn't wanted to disclose anything in the first place - it just seemed _wrong_ somehow - but it had been the only thing that could convince her to take him out to a seemingly random graveyard at the side of the road.

"Danny?"

He finally turned to her. "You swear you won't say a word of this to anyone. No matter what."

"Well, if it's important then - "

"You swear it, Jazz. I'm dead serious."

Jazz relented. "Okay, Danny. I won't tell anyone."

"Not even if they ask about it?"

"Not even if they ask about it."

Danny let his stare of seriousness linger on her. "You know that night Mom and Dad left real late to come and get me?"

"You still feel bad about that," said Jazz, always too-quick to put things together in the wrong order, "You were stressed, and I won't blame you for that - "

"It's not that. I mean, yeah, maybe, but that's not _it."_

Jazz stepped down. "Okay. I'm listening."

Danny waited for a moment anyway, just to be sure she wouldn't change her mind. "Last bus stop's just up the road. Had to take a shortcut to get into town - _(thought it'd be faster than going around, y'know?)_ \- and." This was the hard part, the part he didn't want to say, because he already knew what she'd think and he hated it. He knew it had to come out anyway. He did owe her the whole explanation.

"This place wasn't empty, Jazz. I know you don't think so but ghosts are real, and I saw one and he _talked_ to me and he took me into town and we sat outside the gas station after I called and Mom said she'd come and get me and - "

"A real ghost."

"Yes, you heard me," Danny shot her a look, and there was a sudden hardness in his voice that made Jazz shut her mouth. "He was all by himself. He said all the other ones left and he was sad and lonely and he wanted somebody to talk to and - what, like I was gonna leave him there?"

_Didn't you, though?_

Jazz didn't say a word. She could see why he hadn't wanted this to reach their parents - their mother, in particular, would have a field day.

"You don't believe me, do you? You think I'm making this up."

"What I think," said Jazz carefully, "is that I can't disprove anything. For all I know, you're right. I wasn't there. I didn't see it. I have to take your word for it - and I know you're not a liar, and I know this is very important to you. Did coming out here make you feel any better?"

Danny turned away and set his chin in his hand again. "Maybe," he mumbled, which was the truth.

What really would have helped was if the phantom had answered him.

"Would coming out here again, maybe next week - would that help at all?"

"Maybe."

Jazz just nodded to herself. That was as close as she was going to get to a yes from him, but it was good enough. "Then I think I could keep promising not to tell anyone about this, and maybe - _maybe_ we could both make something up to tell Mom and Dad when we get back. Deal?"

She always tried too hard, and most of the time Danny hated it; she hovered around, pretending she knew so much, and she didn't know when to quit. When she got it right, though - this was one of those times, when she had just the right thing to say, and despite that she was usually a nuisance, she really was helping him along.

Danny softened. "Thanks, Jazz. That'd be great."

* * *

The moon was gaining strength again after starving itself to a sliver over the past few nights. It was angry and bitter, and its pallid silver light glowered over the sleeping earth; the cold came with it, and with the cold came the phantom. He went along the double yellow lines without a sound - he wasn't far off now, only a mile or two, according to the sign for the turnoff, and he was hoping to spot the city streetlights from atop the rise ahead.

A single headlight came up behind him at the same time that the sudden catch in his chest made him pause. The feeling was familiar - nostalgic, almost - and he allowed a thin line of mist to escape him. It was something he hadn't felt for six years; for just a moment, he was back at the Whispering Oaks, and he wasn't alone. A whiff of cold mist meant the assurance of company, and the buried loneliness in him relented.

He turned, thinking to spot the spirit, and stared for a moment longer than he should have. The headlight on him burned not yellow but an ethereal off-white green, and only swerved around him at the last second. He whirled; the spectral motorbike skidded in a one-eighty to face him. From behind the headlight came an annoyed _(watch it, punk!)_ and the bike spun around and sped off.

The phantom flew after it, coming up over the rise, and saw the biker's ghostlight as he screamed down the empty highway into Amity Park. It was the haunting hour - the streetlights were still on but houses and shops and offices were all dark, but all the phantom saw was that he'd made it. After everything that had happened, and after spending the last six years in solitude in a town that no longer knew his name, Amity Park was no longer a concept but a real place.

And it was starting to carry the potential to be called _home._


End file.
